Alleged Serial Rapist Displayed 'Eerily Similar' Conduct, Prosecutor Says

A 28-year-old woman testified today that an alleged serial rapist arrested in Austria last year repeatedly punched her in the face to get her to stop screaming as he raped her in 2004 in a secluded area.

When Ali Achekzai, who is also charged in a 2002 sexual assault of a 21-year-old woman in limosine in Laguna Beach, covered the alleged victim's mouth with his hand, she sunk her teeth into it, she testified.

"I bit his hand," the trembling woman testified. "I tasted blood."

That blood, along with the semen on the victim's clothes following the May 3, 2004, attack near Mt. Soledad in La Jolla, led investigators to make a DNA match to a rape earlier that year in Tustin, Deputy District Attorney Robert Mestman told jurors in his opening statement.

Achekzai's attorney, Ronald Cordova, declined to give an opening statement today.

Achekzai, who had been on the Orange County District Attorney's "Most Wanted" list for years, is a 33-year-old former Ladera Ranch resident. He was accused of rape in April 2009 in Salzburg, Austria, but those charges were later dropped and he was extradited back to Orange County in August of last year.

Arrest warrants were first issued in October 2004 in connection with the alleged Southern California attacks, but the Afghan native fled the country before he could face charges in the U.S., according to Mestman.

In the Laguna Beach attack, Achekzai allegedly met his victim at a Laguna Beach nightclub on Jan. 31, 2004. About 4 a.m., the woman observed Achekzai following her in his car as she was driving on Jamboree Road toward Tustin.  Achekzai is accused of pulling up near her car and yelling for her to pull over because he wanted to talk to her about something important.

The alleged victim parked in a fast food restaurant lot and got into Achekzai’s car. Achekzai is accused of luring her under the pretense of warning her about another man she had met at the nightclub. The victim became scared, got out of his car, and attempted to run away. Achekzai is accused of getting out of chasing her, catching her, and eventually leading her back to her car.

Once they were in the alleged victim’s car, Achekzai is accused of grabbing her by the neck, holding her down, and raping her. 

In an earlier Laguna Beach assault, Achekzai is accused of getting into a limousine with several people in 2002 including a 24-year-old woman and her friends. The group had been at a nightclub in Laguna Beach and drove to Costa Mesa to drop one of the men off at home. While in the limousine, Achekzai is accused of removing the woman's pants and assaulting her with the intent to commit a sexual offense after she fell asleep. She awoke to find him fondling her, authorites said.

In the San Diego case, the 28-year-old woman, who was 21 when she was allegedly raped in San Diego County in 2004, had gone to meet up with her cousin, who had met Achekzai's cousin in the same Laguna Beach nightclub where the 2002 sexual assault occurred, Mestman said.

The alleged victim, her cousin and Achekzai and his cousin drove around San Diego looking for a business still open to buy alcohol, the prosecutor said. When they could not find one, they drove to the Mt. Soledad area, he said.

Achekzai and the alleged victim paired off and took a walk to leave the other two alone, but she got scared when she felt they had walked too far. She testified that she told Achekzai she wanted to go back to the car and started to walk in that direction when he grabbed her by the hand.

The woman said she tried to fight back as Achekzai repeatedly punched her and then sexually assaulted her.

"He kept telling me, "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you,' " she testified.

When the two got back to the car, the woman whispered to her cousin what had happened and her cousin grew hysterical, Mestman said. Achekzai denied he attacked the woman, but when she turned around and started slapping him, "he clocked her," knocking out a tooth, the prosecutor said.

The woman, who is of Middle Eastern ancestry as are the other two alleged victims, initially lied to her parents about what happened because she was afraid of Achekzai and because of the stigma of admitting rape in her culture, Mestman said. An expert will testify that rape carries such a stigma in Middle Eastern culture that it's common for victims to be blamed for an attack, he said.

When investigators determined the woman's story did not add up and that there was a DNA match to another rape, she told authorities what really happened, Mestman said.

"They all describe eerily similar conduct of the defendant," Mestman said of the victim accounts. "This case was made from DNA evidence essentially."

—City News Service contributed to this report.